Congress restores military retiree benefits

February 12, 2014|By Hugh Lessig, hlessig@dailypress.com

Military retirees have spoken, and Congress has listened.

The Senate on Tuesday approved legislation restoring military pension benefits that prompted a firestorm of criticism. In a bit of horse trading, the Senate abandoned its own bill and accepted a House proposal.

Virginia senators Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner supported the measure. Kaine said Wednesday he knew cutting benefits was problematic even before complaints began coming in.

The controversy started with passage of December's budget bill, a bipartisan deal that avoided both a government shutdown and automatic spending cuts under sequestration.

However, it saved $6 billion by slowing the growth rate of pension benefits for working-age military retirees, a 1 percent cut in the yearly cost-of-living increase. It would take effect in December 2015.

Upon reaching 62, the retirees would receive a cost-of-living correction, restoring the benefit to what it would have been without the cut. But that wouldn't have compensated them for what they lost between when they retired until the time they reached 62.

Kaine and Warner backed a Senate bill that would have simply restored the $6 billion. It was sponsored by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. But the Pryor bill was put aside in favor of House legislation that restored the benefit, but also extended automatic cuts to Medicare. That way, restoring the money didn't add to the budget deficit.

Kaine said he didn't approve of the Medicaid cut, but the House came to the Senate's position on a different issue –extending the debt limit without tying it to other issues.

"The House did come our way with a clean debt ceiling bill," Kaine said.

Kaine and Warner had proposed paying for the cut by closing an offshore tax loophole, but Republicans opposed that plan.

Meanwhile, some GOP senators supported an idea from Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., that would have offset the cost of the cut by no longer allowing undocumented immigrants to claim a child tax credit.

"We want to fix this, but we can do so by paying for it," Ayotte said Tuesday. "It would simply require that those who seek a tax refund for the additional child tax credit would have to list a social security number for the child."